Nothing Like a Hero
by Kindre Turnany
Summary: Stiles wondered how he sounded to them. Like a liar? Like a coward? Like a thief? Nothing like a hero.


I don't know. I just sat down and wrote without any sort of plan or goal. This is what came out.

**Nothing Like a Hero**

"It's not as simple as that." Stiles stood in the center, surrounded by wolves, lizards, and hunters, all staring at him like he'd just claimed Mars had breathable atmosphere. He wondered how he sounded to them. Like a liar? Like a coward? Like a thief?

Nothing like a hero.

His heart pounded in his chest. The beat of it stretched up into his throat and slid into his mouth to grasp at his tongue. He lips spread, mouth working, but his heart held firm to his throat. Stiles would have laughed if he could because in the one moment he _needed_ to speak, he'd forgotten how.

Sudden darkness. A spark of light. Stiles yelped and jumped nearly out of his skin before he realized a light had only flickered. It was a dusty, dirty, degrading warehouse. He should be more surprised there was power at all than that the lights sometimes went off and on. Stiles wiped sweat off his palms onto the front of his pants and licked his lips.

"So nice of you all to come see me tonight," he started over, ignoring their accusations for now with a false grin not a one of them believed. "I was going to have refreshments, maybe lemonade and scones, but that plan sort of fell through." He shrugged and laughed nervously, voice hitching over what were secretly cries for help. No one here would help him now. Not yet.

Allison, sweet Allison so in love with Scott and so determined always to do the right thing, leveled her compound bow at Stiles. "Get on with it," she commanded. Bow raised, small army of hunters arrayed behind her in the flickering artificial light and lower but so much steadier moonlight, she looked the part of the huntress, the queen ready to take his life.

Stiles laughed again because what else was he supposed to do?

Scott didn't lift a hand to help Stiles. He stood beside Derek and Erica, hackles raised, fangs testing the air as if it could tell him how much force he would need to rip through Stiles' tender flesh. Stiles wondered if maybe they weren't best friends anymore. He spun a circle, arms spread out as if welcoming everyone in Beacon Hills who could tear him to pieces at a glance.

"I have something you want." He smiled at the hunters. "I have something you need." He shot his best finger guns off at Derek and nearly yelped again at the sound of his own snaps. "I have something you really, really wish no one had at all." He finally turned to Peter Hale. His hand was around Lydia's throat, claws tapping at the pale skin. She didn't even look scared anymore, just bored, tired, and if he focused on the tightness of her eyes and wished really hard, maybe a little angry. Stiles smiled at her, and she ignored him.

"Where is it, Stiles?" Peter's eyes glowed red. He didn't move forward though. None of them did.

Stiles rolled his eyes. He rolled them so hard he stumbled sideways and had to catch himself, flailing his arms about and hollering like he'd just found a wasp in his locker. They all stepped forward at that. Just one step.

"Where the hell do you think it is?" Stiles snapped. None of them were really that dumb. They had to have known. Stiles didn't have anyone else. No one to help him, no one to hide it, no one to keep it safe or keep it a secret. "I thought I was playing with my cards face-up." He smirked at them and hoped it looked condescending because they needed to think his disadvantages were his strengths.

"What was the point of calling us here then if you can't hand it over?" Allison asked, but she lowered her bow so it pointed at Stile's feet instead of his heart. She couldn't afford to kill him now.

Lydia rolled her eyes but stayed still. Stiles considered letting her answer Allison because it should have been obvious.

"He needs us at each other's throats," Jackson said it instead, with a smug grin. If not for the faint patterning of scales that spread across his skin as he spoke, Stiles would have thought Jackson looked proud. "If he tried to confront us one at a time, we could have captured or killed him, but this way we would all fight each other for him." He cocked his head. "The only part I'm confused on is why he thinks he can get out of this alive even if his little club meeting dissolves into fighting."

"Thank you, Jackson," Stiles offered his best golf clap. "As Jackson has pointed out, I can't take you on one-at-a-time or all-at-a-time." He smiled, for once not having to fake it. "But Jackson missed the part where not everyone who holds it is just a vessel." He held out his hands, palms up, fingers arching. It hadn't worked last time, and he still needed practice. But he felt the hair on his arms rise and the tickle in his chest that meant he was touching something he shouldn't be.

Then his hands caught fire.

The wolves and lizards and hunters surrounding him took a step _back_ that time. Allison's bow raised again, though Stiles wasn't sure what she expected to shoot. The other wolves, those with Derek and those with Peter, bared their fangs. Jackson smirked. Lydia laughed.

The flames started to warm, and Stiles told them to _go away_ before he burned himself. They mostly went out, but he wound up slapping his hands against his legs to smother the flames. He didn't think it made him less scary than he'd suddenly become. Actually, it probably just made him worse. Nervous human plus great power he can't keep a handle on equaled oh fuck for everyone involved.

Stiles laughed. "Pretty cool, huh?" He answered the horrified faces with a grin and tried not to look at Jackson too hard in case it broke his cool because he was scary even without Matt to tell him to kill people. The way he seemed to like what Stiles was doing right now only made it worse.

"Oh now that's cute," Peter retook his step forward. "I was worried for a while there, but, Stiles, really?" He smiled the same condescending smile people had given Stiles his entire life because he was never good enough and they thought it time he knew. "I was worried you'd give it to someone powerful, someone who knew how to use it. But you've just given me the best gift I could hope for." The smile widened.

"It comes with an instruction booklet," Stiles said, tapping his forehead. And, yeah, maybe it was hard to access and really confusing even once he found it, but no one else needed to know that. "And, Peter, I thought you believed in me." Stiles brought a hand to his forehead and feigned a case of the vapors. "That was why you wanted to bite me, right?"

"As I recall, you turned me down." He frowned, and Stiles counted it as a mild victory even if he didn't understand.

"Well there's no room for it inside a wolf." He raised his hand to clutch at the cotton-soft fabric of his t-shirt where it covered the center of his chest. He felt the tightness and the static, the whirl of power and the hunger for more. More of it for him or more of him for it, he couldn't say. From what he could tell, it didn't matter. It would consume him either way.

"Can you do it then?" Allison asked. Her father put his hand on her shoulder, but she ignored him. "Is it enough?" Her voice came out breathless, desperate. It belonged to a teenage girl pleading for help, not the leader of ruthless hunters. Chris Argent's hand tightened around her shoulder.

"No." Stiles laughed to take the edge off it. "Not yet."

"You mean not alone." Derek's fangs receded, and his eyes faded into green as he straightened out of his crouch.

"And we have a winner!" Stiles grinned.

"You expect someone here to be strong enough for that?" This time the laughter belonged to Peter Hale.

"You expect them not to?" Stiles didn't bother to speak over the echoing laughter. Peter would hear him.

"Who then? Derek? My nephew isn't an alpha anymore, in case you missed the memo. And I seem to have commandeered half his pack. Jackson? A kanima is a lot of things, Stiles, but not one to team up with lightly. I don't think you'd enjoy the bond any more than he would. Your friendly neighborhood hunters who would label you inhuman now and kill you as soon as you finished with me? I doubt any of them has the power to take me anyway." He smiled. "I don't know about you, but I'm not liking you chances. Or, rather, I'm liking them quite a bit."

Stiles answered the new condescending smile with his own. It made him feel slimy. "Yeah, that, that would really suck for me if a leaderless pack, a lonely lizard, and some crazies with guns were my only options. I mean, what kind of odds are those?" He stretched a hand forward, reaching toward Peter. "Lucky me, you brought someone much more powerful than all that." He clenched his fingers into a fist and pulled it in toward him. When the fist reached his chest, so did Lydia.

With a flourish that almost toppled him, Stiles bowed the Lydia and pulled off his glove to reveal the old ring. It was empty now. The hammered silver looked old and dirty without the glow of _power_ it used to have. Stiles held Lydia's hand in one of his and the ring in the other, letting it shift to fit her finger.

Peter charged as Lydia giggled, watching a vine pattern sprout on the silver and little green jewels appear in place of leaves. Derek's pack threw themselves into Peter hard enough that he hit the ground. When he stood again, he was a wolf. The hunters fanned out, firing at both packs and trying to surround Stiles and Lydia. Scales patterned over Jacksons skin again as he shifted halfway, enough for more power, but not enough to forget himself. Stiles smoothed out the silver of the ring and made it thin and beautiful and fit for Lydia Martin. She raised an eyebrow at him.

"Everyone we know is killing each other around us, and you're making me a ring?" She smirked. "At least someone here has priorities."

Stiles laughed even though he knew he shouldn't, knew it was the power eating away at him, knew it pushed most men over the edge in seconds. He pressed the ring to his lips first and then to Lydia's perfect finger. He pushed his power back out of himself and into the ring as its lid along her skin. He wanted to snarl, to take it back, to go find more and keep that for himself too.

It was _his_. It belonged to him, not some girl who had only ever repaid his admiration with disdain, and that was if she even noticed him at all. She didn't deserve this. He stopped the flow, readied to reverse it. Lydia smiled at him so hard he thought his face might melt. She pulled at it, pulled at _him_, dragged his power out and into her through the ring. When it had all seeped out, she clenched here eyes and fists tightly shut like that could hold the chaos at bay.

"How did you stand it?" She gasped, hand against her chest where Stiles knew she felt it sitting, waiting, consuming.

He shrugged. "Dr. Deaton said I wouldn't have trouble holding it, just letting it go." And he hadn't, not really. "He also said that was the reason I had to give it to you."

Lydia nodded as though that made sense. "How do you use it?" She stared at her hands. Stiles had too at first. He held it in his chest, but he reached it with his hands. That had been clear from the moment he touched it. The now-empty place in his chest ached.

"You wish really hard." He shrugged. "Or you believe really hard. It's the same as any other magic, except that it eats people from the inside."

She stared at him wide-eyed, still ignoring the fighting, screaming, and spilling of blood that surrounded them even when Jackson stopped right beside her to jerk an arrow out of his shoulder and advance on Gerard Argent. "How long do I have?"

"I don't know. So now might be a good time to think about how really, really dead Peter Hale is supposed to be. Like in the ground, eaten by worms or whatever dead." Something flashed through Lydia's eyes when he said "worms," but it passed again as she turned to find Peter in the fray.

Stiles made to follow her, but something was wrong with his leg. He noticed the pain spearing him through the shin about the time he hit the ground. The scream he let out when he moved to examine his leg melded into the other sounds of battled. He saw the hole and the blood soaking through his jeans and knew before he rolled the pant leg out of the way that it was a bullet. He felt the back of his leg for an exit wound, but no, the skin was smooth. When he twisted his leg around to peek inside the hole in his flesh, Stiles saw the bullet wedged in between the red of flesh and blood and a white scrap that could only be bone.

His fingers couldn't reach the bullet, and trying only made the pain worse. Instead he ripped up part of his shirt and tied it around the wound, hoping it would be enough to stop the bleeding. If he gritted his teeth and mostly used the other leg, Stiles could stand. Shuffling forward jolted his leg, but he refused to let himself fall again.

The fighting went on. Boyd and Scott were on the ground, close enough to each other that if they'd been conscious, they could have clawed each other's eyes out. Erica hid from the hunters, or maybe Peter, behind a pillar, gripping her arm as blood gushed out between her fingers. Allison reloaded her bow and leaned out from behind her own pillar to take aim at Peter, the alpha, whose eyes glowed red in the shadows no one else could seem to survive.

Derek threw himself at his uncle again and again, eyes glowing ice blue through the streaming red of his own blood. Half his face was ruined, skin hanging limply, flapping in the breeze of his charge. He screamed the hopeless scream of a man desperate even to die because at least then it would be over.

Jackson chuckled from behind Stiles. "How much of this did you plan?" he whispered in Stiles' ear.

"Not enough." He winced at the pain in his leg as he turned. "You should cover Lydia."

Jackson motioned to where Isaac flew back from Lydia's outstretched hand and into a broken end of a pipe. "I think she's covered."

Stiles whistled. "She learns fast." It had taken him hours to realize he could direct the power and hours more to realize how. He'd shown off his only two tricks before handing it off to someone who could do more with it.

"You don't." He traced a claw along Stiles face, breaking the skin along his jaw.

"Asshole," Stiles spat as he fell.

Jackson caught him before he hit the ground. "Shut it, moron. I'm saving your life." He lifted Stiles to his shoulder as easily as if he'd been one of those pool noodles that came in garish colors and generally wound up snapped in half. With an equally easy bound, Jackson carried Stiles to the catwalk and set him down.

"Wait, are you just gonna leave me up here?" Stiles snatched feebly at Jackson's leg. "Someone is going to find me, and I won't be able to get away because the ground is way down there even if I wasn't paralyzed from the neck down."

Jackson cocked his head with a smirk. "Then I suggest you play dead."

Stiles groaned as Jackson leapt back to the ground. He pushed himself to roll over until he could see off the catwalk to the fighting below. From here he saw more than just individuals trying not to die. He saw how everyone fought against the alpha only to pause and shoot or claw at each other once they remembered he wasn't the only threat. He saw how they almost had him, almost could take him, if only they'd work together.

He saw Lydia walk barefoot through the blood to stand before Peter Hale and smile up at him. She pressed her fingers to his face, and he became a man again. The fur faded, the fangs retracted. When he stood before her naked and human, he began to rot. Worms burrowed out from his eyes, and the concrete gave way to soil at his feet. Lydia stumbled back as she buried Peter. As she stared, a light grew at her finger until it shone out across the warehouse. Stiles felt its warmth on his face and grinned. It had been a cold light before he took it.

The hunters, those who could still stand, surrounded Lydia, but she simply smiled at them until they backed down. Only Stiles knew she didn't have the power anymore, that the ring only shone like that when it was full. When Lydia waved them away, the hunters gathered their injured and their dead and dispersed. Allison stared at Scott for too long before she left, but she went with her family all the same.

It was over. The wolves stumbled to their feet, already healing. Jackson watched from a shadow in a corner so deep Stiles was sure he could only see because he was so high up. Lydia looked around and smiled, but it was the cold, cruel smile she gave before destroying someone.

"It was so nice of you all to tell me about your powers and my powers and the dead werewolf in the burnt-down house in the woods. All that knowledge really helped me prepare for this." She laughed, and the sound echoed like steel on steal instead of a girl's voice on concrete. "Maybe in the future, you won't make the mistake of protecting me." She stormed from the warehouse even though she had just killed and buried her ride. Jackson slinked out of the shadows, scales and reptilian eyes fading as he followed Lydia outside.

Stiles thought Jackson meant to give Lydia a ride home, which was good. Except... "Jackson!" he called out, still unable to move even to look out the large windows and see if Jackson was still around. "Hey, you're supposed to let me down from here." He tried to flail about and managed something like a twitch. "Damnit, Jackson, why were you even here?" He groaned and resigned himself to never getting an answer because Jackson and Lydia were probably long gone.

Something—or more likely someone—thumped onto the catwalk outside of Stiles' line of sight.

"How did you know he'd bring her?" It was Derek's voice, followed by Derek's hands lifting him. Stiles prepared to wince at the pain of being moved, but Jackson paralytic had numbed his body too.

"Same way I knew Allison would bring her bow." Lydia was Peter's protection right up to the moment she became his destruction. "That and she makes a nice hostage because everyone involved wants her safe." As an afterthought he added, "There's a bullet in my leg."

Derek leapt down from the catwalk, landing much too heavily with Stiles' extra weight. Fortunately, Stiles didn't feel a thing. He also didn't feel Scott jabbing a finger into his chest as he demanded answers.

"Can't we talk about this later when I'm not injured and paralyzed?" Stiles groaned.

Scott hesitated. "We can talk on the way to the hospital." He looked to Derek just long enough for him to nod in agreement, eyes flashing red instead of blue. "Why didn't you tell us? We could have helped you?"

"No, you could have upset the balance. You had to appear to be against me too." The only person Stiles spoke to had been Dr. Deaton, and even then it had been more of a quick "Lydia's the one with power over Peter Hale" memo than anything else.

"But... we're pack." He looked like a lost puppy.

Boyd and Isaac shuffled forward then. They bent forward, making themselves small, and stared more at Derek's feet than his eyes. If they had tails, they would have been between their legs. "Derek," Boyd spoke first. "I'm... I should never have gone against the pack." He glanced over at Isaac. "_We_ shouldn't have."

"We're sorry," Isaac added. "Will you... take us back?"

"You nearly tore off Erica's arm." Derek scowled.

"And it's _still _healing!" Erica added, flinging blood off her fingers and into Isaac's face.

Boyd and Isaac had nothing more to say, so they only cringed under Derek's gaze. Eventually he turned his eyes from them to Stiles. "You're the mastermind of the night. What do you think?"

"You worked with him once too right?"

Derek nodded, and Stiles realized he'd just been looking for someone else to justify taking them back. He had turned them, and Stiles doubted Derek would ever turn them away now. "Everyone makes mistakes. Just remember a werewolf's mistakes can end with people getting killed. I won't be as forgiving if it happens again." Stiles chuckled because _that_ was a lie.

"Very nice, everyone. We're one big happy family again." Stiles managed to keep his voice level this far, but it rose when he continued, "Now let's go get the bullet out of my leg."

"Whiney human," Derek muttered as he turned away. "Not having superhuman healing doesn't make you special, you know." But he moved quickly and carefully settling Stiles into the car and driving off before the others even caught up.

"Naw, it's my dashing good looks and undeniable sense of humor that makes me special."

"Undeniably funny looks, maybe." Derek glanced over, not to share a joke, but to check on Stiles. He made a definitely illegal turn and sped through a residential area.

"Why aren't you this sassy when the others are around?" Stiles shifted, finally having regained some control over his muscles, and instantly regretted it. He hissed at the pain in his leg, but waved for him to continue driving when Derek nearly stopped the car.

"I'm not... sassy," he said at just the moment Stiles realized Derek's attempts at humor were meant to distract him from the pain.

"No, that's right, you're Broody McGrumpywolf waging your war against humor and smiles everywhere for the good of depressed kind." Stiles could feel the car on the road now, the steady thrum no one ever noticed because it was too normal, too subtle, too just what cars do. Or at least it was until it started vibrating a bullet against his tibia. Even as he forced the jokes out, Stiles knew Derek wasn't fooled, and not just because of the new tightness in his voice.

"You left out the shadows I stalk people from."

"Dude, it's not even just shadows." Stiles winced, reached for his leg automatically, and made himself pull back because he wasn't going to do it much good now. "I've seen you watching the high school in broad daylight. And that's borderline pedophilia or something."

Derek alternated between staring at Stiles and the road.

"Did I finally break you?" Stiles asked.

"We're here." Derek slammed the breaks too hard and stopped the car right in front of the hospital doors. He rushed out and pulled Stiles from the passenger side as someone showed up to say he couldn't park there. Derek, being Derek, ignored them and carried Stiles into the hospital.

"You left," Stiles paused for a deep breath. "Your keys." Each step sent a new jolt of pain through his leg. "In the car." He passed out before hearing whatever answer Derek came up with.

When Stiles woke, he found his leg comfortably numbed and his father anxiously pacing. "Stiles," he half-shouted as soon as he realized his son's eyes had opened. A number of, 'I was so worried's and, 'What were you even doing out of the house's followed. Stiles shrugged them off until he reached, "They say Derek hale brought you in. Is this something to do with him?"

"What? No." Stiles struggled to sit up but flopped back down uselessly. "Derek helped me. It was the opposite of his fault. Like if his fault was a red balloon, this would be a plate of green noodles."

"...I see they put you on the good drugs."

Stiles grinned because he _did_ feel pretty good, and his leg didn't hurt even a little. He thought maybe he could hop up and down on it and not feel a thing, that is if he could manage to stand which seemed like a fuzzy sort of idea—if an idea could even be fuzzy. He decided to just assume it made sense because _he_ at least understood what he meant. Then he realized he was wearing a hospital gown and thought better of standing up until he knew what he was wearing under it anyway. "Is it gonna scar? Will it look cool? Can I still walk? Who's the current leader in hoverchair technology?"

"Calm down, son." He set his hand on Stiles' shoulder and squeezed as if the pressure could force some calm past Stiles' chatter. "You'll be able to walk eventually but will probably need some physical therapy to get there. And it'll scar. You can decide later if that's cool or not."

"Where's Derek?" He looked around but saw no sign of anyone but his father.

"He left after I arrived."

"Oh." Stiles thought better of asking after the rest of the pack until he knew what Derek had said happened, if he said anything. He faked a yawn. "Is it okay if I...?" He lifted a hand to motion toward where his head already lay on the pillow.

"Yeah, son. Rest up." He smiled the tight smile that meant he had way too much to say but just wanted Stiles to feel better first.

Stiles nodded, or tried to nod and wound up twitching his head awkwardly atop the thin hospital-bed pillow. He closed his eyes and thought of all the most plausible excuses for the bullet in his leg because if he didn't, he'd start to plan all the most effective plots for getting that ring back from Lydia. Dr. Deaton had told Stiles this would happen, had warned him how badly he would want it in the same sentence he told Stiles not to take in the power himself under any circumstances. He'd thrown around phrases like "too dangerous" and "lifetimes of training" and "inevitable fall into madness." Even though Stiles tried to listen, his plan didn't work without the power. None of his plans did. He got the feeling Dr. Deaton knew this even as he tried to warn Stiles off.

The ache in his chest throbbed. Drugs would never be strong enough to hold that at bay. As he fell back asleep under his worried father's gaze, Stiles wondered if anything would ever be strong enough. Probably not. The ache found him even in his dreams and laughed at him, so Stiles laughed back until he screamed.


End file.
